Monday, March 29, 2010

As you probably know by now Colin loves stickers, so it wasn't a big jump to start a sticker chart for his potty success. I found ours online, and used stickers we already had. As it turns out the sticker isn't all that big of a motivator since he has so many sticker books. Being allowed to place one sticker on a chart isn't a big deal when he typically will pick out and place 4-6 stickers in his sticker books before moving on. The biggest motivator has been the 'pee-pee on the potty march' where we march around the house clapping with high fives in the living room.This becomes a even bigger reward, the more people who are around to give high fives.

Days when Colin has 1 sticker are from going right before bath time. He had a 100% success rate with this time of day last week. The second sticker is from the first morning attempt and if he gets a third it has been when Daddy gets home from work.

We are very pleased with his progress but I fully expect that the novelty will wear off at some point, but so long as he is enjoying the process we will attempt to keep up the good work. He is so young, there is no rush or need to push.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Colin had a very busy weekend! Like most everyone else along the east coast it was BEAUTIFUL outside so Colin spent some time in the sunshine. I spent some time Saturday morning rummaging through last summers clothes to see if anything still fit and ended up putting Colin in a new shirt I purchased from old navy in a size 2T (ON 2T is smaller than say a Carters 2T) so he could wear short sleeves, it was a bit long but it worked.

Saturday we went up to CT for Sam and Ben's 2nd Birthday. We all had a great time and enjoyed the nice weather. Here are my favorite photos from the day:

All three boys playing with Sam and Ben's gifts.

Sam's sweet smile.

Ben's turn with the candles

Sam's turn!

Playing outside!

It was a big day for getting over fears! Colin got over his fear of sand and Ben got over his fear of Colin!

Colin and Ben collecting acorns with 'Mimi'. Good practice for the Easter Egg hunt!

Ben gives a smile. He is a bit swollen from a course of steroids to treat a severe allergic reaction.

Nice smiles from BOTH boys at once! Not an easy feat.

Another of Sam and Ben's birthday gifts! Colin enjoyed playing baseball.

Almost ready for organized play!

Batter up!

Then on Sunday we went to the Circus! A friend of Sean's was able to get us some tickets. We were originally going to bring Lauren and Katie, but Lauren had a game so Grammy came instead. The seats were perfect. Far enough away not to be overwhelmed but still close to the action and very near the center of it all.

There was a pre-show animal meet and greet so we got to view the elephants tigers and farm animals up close.

Then we got to go down on the floor before the show started to do a meet and greet with some of the human characters! Colin was a bit nervous about this part since it was very crowded and loud.

Clown noses free with admission! Colin wasn't such a fan of them being on him.

Intermission. Colin was a champ and sat on my lap throughout the entire thing. I think his favorite part was the motorcycle on the high wire since it occurred right in front of us. We even made it out without having to purchase any outrageously priced souvenirs. I thought for sure he would want one of the light up things but he never showed any interest and since they were $20 and up I wasn't offering.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

quick note: My good camera battery died after taking the first six pictures which include this one and the next. The rest are taken from the video camera's still camera option. It is an awesome video camera, but as you can see it takes horrible still shots. My apologies.

I feel like there haven't been many new developments this month, so this may be a short post! Colin's 20 month 'anniversary/birthday' whatever you want to call it, happens to fall on St. Patrick's Day. Nothing special planned for the holiday, I considered taking him to the parade but since it starts at 11am and nap time is generally 11am I quickly decided that was a no go. Besides, it isn't really a children's holiday anyway! No green beer for him! We will celebrate by going grocery shopping, and maybe I'll find a special green treat for dessert (added later, I did find a treat, but he never ate it. Dinner didn't finish until 7!)

Loving the Slide! The jacket was unnecessary since it was over 60 degrees today but I couldn't talk him out of it. Thankfully he didn't insist on a hat!

Likes:

Dumping things: I purchased some clear storage boxes from Target to help Colin 'catagorize' his toys. This is something he has been showing more interest in lately, and he seems to enjoy the toys more when they are grouped together rather than just all tossed into a communal toy box. However, more than that he enjoyes dumping the toys out of their boxes onto the floor. He has a box of blocks, and a box of Anamalz (more about them in another post), both of which get dumped with frequency. When I purchased the boxes I thought he might have trouble with the tops but he had it figured out in seconds. We have 'clean up clean up' time every night before bath and Colin is very good at helping to put away his toys. I will often hear chucks of the clean up song (not the barney one, we learned a different one at music class) when he is putting away toys on his own accord. Cleaning up is half the fun!

MyGym: Colin started a MyGym class last Friday and we went to open play on Tuesday. We have 8 weeks of classes here and then we will go back to his Music class. I will post more about MyGym when I have some good pictures, and hopefully I'll remember to post about the music class during the next round of classes.

Leo and 'Yeoh-Dawn': Somewhere mid month we started wondering if Colin thought Dawn's name was Leo, I'm pretty sure he was referring to both Leo and Dawn as 'yeoh-yeoh-yeoh' so I started correcting him saying that's not Leo its Dawn, so now he calls her 'Yeoh-Dawn'. Its actually kind of cute. We were over there yesterday so Dawn could run some last min vacation errands (they are off to Puerto Rico today!) and I'm not sure who was more excited to see Dawn return, Colin or Leo!?

Talking on the phone or web cam: Colin loves when his grandparents or Aunt and Uncles call us or talk to us via web cam. He often requests to call different people during the day or will pick up an object and pretend to talk to someone. His conversations usually go "hello... yeah... yeah.... bye" it is pretty cute.

Crayons: He has made a big improvement this month with crayons, and is requesting to use them more and more. We have to get a new jumbo coloring book for the easel because he also frequently requests a new page. We try to go back and re-use them but that doesn't always fly. He also enjoys coloring on large cardboard boxes, particularly being in the box and coloring on it.

Puzzles: I guess it was somewhere around 18 months that Colin mastered puzzles and now loves to play with them. I might get a full 7 minutes of him playing alone out of a puzzle. He does play well alone but for shorter bursts rather than long stretch of time. But for a 'boy' (if you'll allow me to stereotype for a moment) he does pretty well. I've heard of worse.

Baby Carter Vidoes: Move over Katie there is a new kid in town. Kristeen recently posted some videos of her son Carter and we play them frequently! Colin is now requesting 'baby carter" videos more than katie videos.

Continues to love books, stickers (particularly putting them on his cheeks), monkeys, balls, DVD's and music.

Not too sure about those big kids! (Bad camera!) He opted for a cap instead of the jacket this time.

Dislikes:

When 'Chuck My Talking Truck' actually talks: Colin likes this toy, as long as it is in the off position. Otherwise he gets nervous and quickly walks away from it, typically not putting his back to it.

Water in his eyes: We had a bubble accident this month when a bubble popped in his eye. It was clearly very painful and it took some time for me to rinse it out. Now whenever water gets splashed in his face, he is clearly expecting it to hurt again and freaks out a bit. Hopefully he will start to forget the burning of soap in the eye and go back to being okay with some water splashing in his face.

A Pluto the dog plush magnet. I have no idea why he is afraid of this, but when I moved it from the side of the fridge to the front, he pulled it off and immediately dropped it and came running to me. I put it up high so it wouldn't bother him but he still eyes it warily.

The swing just conked him on the head, he thinks it is funny.

New Things:

Potty Time!: This is our biggest change this month. Colin has successfully peed on the potty about a handful of times. He prefers to stand, but since he can't aim or even reach if he could aim, I hold the removable portion up to him and he will 'try' to go. His little stomach will go in and out a few times while he tries to figure out which muscles control what, it is quite precious. A few days ago he even said 'diaper' (de-bob-ba) while he was completely dressed and when I asked if he had to go pee pee on the potty he said yes and he delivered. Right now we are blowing bubbles when he is successful and/or we do a little march around the house announcing Colin's success to his stuffed animals and the cats (and Sean if he is home).

Improved Independent eating: Colin has gotten really good with a spoon. He can now eat most of a container of yogurt by himself and bowls of cereal with milk. He even managed a thick soup the other day. He is pretty good with a fork too but still requests help since I can get more on a fork at once, and the child likes to take "human bites!" I think that comes from a Life cereal commercial.

Eating Meat: Colin now will eat occasionally eat chili, chicken strips, and bbq chicken legs. I keep putting things on his plate, I'm hoping he will eventually take to it. He is even eating my favorite potato soup, which is great since he has rejected potatoes before that. Building bridges people, it is all about building bridges.

Current favorites: Cream cheese on anything! Particularly with jelly. PEAS, the kid can't get enough peas! Blueberries and strawberries, not surprising. Oh and, pirates booty, always a hit while sitting in the grocery cart.

Singing: Colin will sing songs to himself, or along with the music. It is mostly gibberish, but when he had a good handle on any particular word that part gets louder and then he goes back to singing under his breath the parts he is unsure of. I will try to get it on video, but he can be shy about it.

Teeth: 2 yr molars still threatening, I haven't been able to check in a few days, he bit me pretty hard last week, so I've been a bit gun-shy. The bottom two have been swollen for about a month and he is complaining and chomping on stuff on and off.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Two weeks ago (when I learned how to knit and unintentionally started abandoning my blog) Colin and I went to visit my side of the family upstate. We flew up on Thursday, Colin was a perfect angel on the plane. Since the flight was nearly empty they gave us the entire head row all to ourselves. This meant he didn't nap because of all the stewardess activity but he did rest on me for a good portion of the flight. He did not choose to sit alone while we were in the air but played in the vacant seats before take off and we looked out the window as we landed (something he doesn't usually do because I always request an isle seat). Colin really really enjoyed his grandparents this trip, he has become much more independent at this age and tends to enjoy the novelty of a "downstairs" so he will go with whom ever will take him. Since he is such a cuddly kid we also got a few pictures of him snuggling Lukas, mostly unprovoked. At one point he was trying to play with Lukas hair, and (like me) Lukas was NOT a fan. He kept saying, "Colin please STOP!". Unfortunately he isn't easily dissuaded and I think I had to move him so he would stop annoying Lukas.
Here are some pictures from that trip. Mostly taken by my mother.

Colin and I chasing Lukas around the kitchen.

Fun was had by all!

Snuggling on the couch at Aunt Sisty's house.

'Playing' the Wii together. I love that they can still be fooled at this age!

More snuggles!

Colin enjoys an old friend!

The flight home was not as blissful as the flight to Syracuse. We boarded the plane only to discover that we wouldn't be taking off for 40 minutes due to a closed runway at JFK. Colin totally lost it and pretty much screamed for the entire 40 mins until the plane took off. Once we were moving he was fine. It didn't help that the plane was full so we had no room to maneuver. I even tried a lollipop but nothing could break the cycle. The people in the seats around me were trying to help, offering their own words of wisdom or support. The actual people in the seat next to me were pretty horrified. They both asked to be reseated as soon as they sat down (in order to give me more room of course!) but that wasn't possible. It took me a couple days to get over that nightmare, I couldn't even talk about it! I felt completely helpless and once he calmed down I thought I was going to start crying myself. By the time we got off the plane he was all smiles and 'bye byes' for everyone. He got many "oh now you're happy!" If that was my first flight with him I may have fully refused to ever do it again, but seeing it was one of seven (at least) flights he has taken and the first major melt down, I'm not too worried. We already have a planned flight in April, although thankfully Sean will be with us for that one. We are definitely getting our miles out of him flying free! It will be a bummer when we actually have to pay for his seat, particularly because I doubt he will sit in it!

One last picture from this past weekend. Colin insisted he wear a hat like daddy's so I snapped a quick pic. Colin smiles on command occasionally now so this is his cheese smile. Not too shabby!

Saturday, March 13, 2010

If you are wondering what happened to me over the last ten days, you can go ahead and blame my sister for my lack of posts. She taught me how to knit. I was an accident! I've been sucked in. I have some pictures to post from my recent trip 'home', but I probably won't get to them until Monday.
Sorry about that!

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

For those of you who still don't see Sean in Colin I'm hoping this helps. Unfortunately I caught him in full flash, but the eyes, ears, lips and expression are all very much Seans. It is one of the most Sean-like photos I've seen.

One of only a few photos of 'Baby Sean' I have here in our apartment (although I have more of him than I have of me!). On the back it says 1981, so the age should be close.